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And there is the question How can the infinite have existence
and remain unlimited: whatever is in actual existence is by that
very fact determined numerically.
But, first, if multiplicity holds a true place among Beings, how
can it be an evil?
As existent it possesses unity; it is a unit-multiple, saved from
stark multiplicity; but it is of a lessened unity and, by that
inwoven multiplicity, it is evil in comparison with unity pure.
No longer steadfast in that nature, but fallen, it is the less,
while in virtue of the unity thence retained it keeps some value;
multiplicity has value in so far as it tends to return to, unity.
But how explain the unlimited? It would seem that either it is
among beings and so is limited or, if unlimited, is not among
beings but, at best, among things of process such as Time. To be
brought to limit it must be unlimited; not the limited but the
unlimited is the subject of limitation, since between the limited
and the unlimited there is no intermediate to accept the
principle of limitation. The unlimited recoils by very nature
from the Idea of limit, though it may be caught and held by it
from without:- the recoil, of course, is not from one place to
another; the limitless can have nothing to do with place which
arises only with the limiting of the unlimited. Hence what is
known as the flux of the unlimited is not to be understood as
local change; nor does any other sort of recognisable motion
belong to it in itself; therefore the limitless cannot move:
neither can it be at rest: in what, since all place is later? Its
movement means little more than that it is not fixed in rest.
Is it, then, suspended at some one point, or rocking to and fro?
No; any such poising, with or without side motion, could be known
only by place [which Matter precedes].
How, then, are we to form any conception of its being?
We must fasten on the bare notion and take what that gives us-
opposites that still are not opposed: we think of large and small
and the unlimited becomes either, of stationary and moving, and
it will be either of these. But primarily it can be neither in
any defined degree, or at once it is under limit. Limitless in
this unlimited and undefined way, it is able to appear as either
of a pair of opposites: draw near, taking care to throw no net of
limit over it, and you have something that slips away; you come
upon no unity for so it would be defined; approach the thing as a
unit, and you find it manifold; call it a manifold, and again you
falsify, for when the single thing is not a unity neither is the
total a manifold. In one manifestation it takes the appearance of
movement, in another of rest, as the mind envisages it.
And there is movement in its lack of consciousness; it has passed
out of Intellectual-Principle, slid away. That it cannot break
free but is under compulsion from without to keep to its circling
with no possibility of advance, in this would be its rest. Thus
it is not true to speak of Matter as being solely in flux.
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